This is one of my favorite movies. Timothy Bottoms is a man with a plan - he places bombs on several amusement part rides, causes mayhem and death, then extorts the companies that own the parks for a million or so dollars. Luckily George Segal, back when he had a thriving film career, is around to try and stop him. Richard Widmark is the G-man that at first dislikes, then grows to actually respect, our hero Harry (George Segal). Character actors William Prince, Harry Gaurdino, and Robert Somethingorother (he played Count Yorga and I will remember his last name the second I click on post) also appear. Lalo Schifrin contributes a fine score that is practically invisible (he composed most of the background calliope and park band music as well as the typical suspense themes). The director was James Goldstone, a TV director, who also directed another guilty pleasure of mine, Irwin Allen's last theatrical disaster epic When Time Ran Out.

I love this movie - I think AMC is airing it this month, hopefully it will be letterboxed.

James Goldstone, "When Time...," and "Rollercoaster" are ALSO guilty favorites of mine. (The expanded video release of "When" shows on TV once in a while--three whole hours with commercials. I never miss it, it tickles me so.)

Trivia: "Rollercoaster" was written by the guys behind a lot of popular television mystery shows like "Columbo," and was the last film to be released in Universal's cheap gimmick, "Sensurround" (I think "Earthquake" and "Midway" were the only other two, could be wrong). The horrifying "accident" at the beginning of the film was quite shocking and controversial at the time (God knows I almost hurled all over the theatre floor), but may have sabotaged the rest of the movie, as the rest of the film is far less violent--save for the ending--relying on suspense rather than spectacle. George Segal sabotaged his own career by badmouthing the film upon its release, and Universal didn't do it any favors by marketing it as though it were a disaster movie, complete with each major actor appearing in a little box on the poster. Lalo Schifrin actually found a way to make a calliope chilling, I'll never forget that; I was probably one of ten people in the world to snatch up the soundtrack :).

AMC does have it, Saturday night, between "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" and "The Conquerer Worm." You could do a LOT worse.

Fun Rollercoaster fact:The big blow-up of the white-wooden rollercoaster complex in the film was filmed at Oceanview Amusement Park near Virginia Beach, Virginia. The structure was built in the 1930's & considered unsafe, so the owners eagerly sold it to the movie company to get rid of it (I and everyone else who grew up in the area probably rode on this thing 100 times or more). Anyway, it took 4(!!) successive attempts, with increasingly high amounts of dynamite to do this thing in. It withstood more charges than were used to bring down concrete hotels, for God's sake! It became a running joke along the beachfront that the film crew were so incompetent that they couldn't reduce a 40-year old stucture to matchwood.

Was the title of that particular telemovie that starred Mike Connors and Martin Landeau. It was also a seventies flick and, despite being jazzed up with somekind of pseudo psychic mumbo jumbo, everything just blew up at the end, even though some kind of freak ground movement was supposedly to blame. Lesson learned: Shifting fault lines can explode like nitro.

MOVIE IDEA:

Let's combine Blood Beach and Death of Ocean View Park! A giant mutant sand monster is sucking down the beach combers at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The Authorities try and blow up and/or poison the beast and get it good and p**sed. It crawls out of the sand and rips the amusement park to shreads before finally being dispatched, only to have its pieces begin growing back!